If you are planning to make a freelance career in crime fighting, what is the one essential skill you should have? Flying makes a good case for itself. Which is why British aeronautic engineering startup Gravity and Redbull’s brand new product makes a pretty good argument for itself. A six-engine jet-propelled personal flying apparatus, the device can make you soar high into the skies at speeds reaching several hundred miles an hour. Although, flights are limited to a few feet and highly manageable speeds at present.
So what the suit consists of, is six small jet engines. Two of these engines are mounted on each of the person’s arms while the remaining two can be mounted one each on the legs, or both simultaneously on the person’s back. There is a backpack too, that consists of fuel that propels the whole suit. Gravity hasn’t exactly run the suit through its paces yet however, it is planning to get to that point soon.
Speaking with Venturebeat, Richard Browning said:
The suit has enough power to achieve many hundred of miles per hour. But safety is the first priority. We have developed the suit to be reliable, stable, and highly capable at low altitude, running pace speed and able to execute precise maneuvers. However, we are rapidly developing every aspect of the system toward some extraordinary, audacious goals.
The suit seems to have derived its ideas from the Iron man suit. The other iterations we have seen in the past were either water powered and connected with a hose pipe to a water body, or are shoulder mounted. The best thing about this particular iteration is that the human body itself is the frame and as such, can be easily used to direct the thrust. None of the other models are very feasible considering that you are not always going to b traveling over a water body and in the second case, the controlling process gets pretty complicated.
The jetpack also has a head mounted display that allows you to check out the fuel remaining and also offers you recommendations and advice — again, similar to the Iron man system.
This product also brings us to the question: Are jetpacks ever going to be feasible modes of transportation? Even apart from the fact that neither the speed not the height you will likely be traveling while wearing one of these systems will leave any scope for collisions and crashes, you have to take into account regulatory hurdles. The government is not particularly friendly to the idea of drones or flying cars an it is definitely going to be very amenable to the idea of flying humans. That said, transportation stands to be completely revised if anything like a jetpack is introduced and I for one, am keeping my fingers crossed fr the same.
